


Equivalent Exchange

by HolmesianDeduction



Category: Watchmen - All Media Types
Genre: Character Study, Developing Friendships, Don't copy to another site, Gen, Genetic Engineering, I guess is the term for it here?, Post-Canon, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-30
Updated: 2019-09-30
Packaged: 2020-11-08 15:10:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,061
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20837579
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HolmesianDeduction/pseuds/HolmesianDeduction
Summary: Adrian Veidt's relationship with Bubastis began long before she was born, and continued after her death.





	Equivalent Exchange

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dearxalchemist](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dearxalchemist/gifts).

It had, Adrian had reflected as he kept his eyes rooted to the output from the computer bank attached to the intricate machine, with all of its tubes and monitors, been an significantly more complex endeavour than he had originally thought it would be.

At some point, he had lost track of the number of rejected embryos – _a lie, he knew exactly how many times he had failed_ – and he had almost given up on the project entirely when he remembered having at some point read an article suggesting the possibility of an external womb. It had been, initially at least, not an article, but a letter complaining that another article had failed to cite the existence of the author’s patent. From that flicker of a memory, he had managed to track down all writings by the author – an Emanuel M. Greenberg – regarding the patent. There had been a very small handful of studies since the patent was filed, and it had been a relatively small matter – _a matter of how many more failures before he had found the precise combination of fluids, of nutrients, of darkness and warmth and sound mixing heartbeats and voices? How many had it been exactly?_ – to fine-tune and tweak the machine until it resembled something viable.

Finding the proper donors had been difficult, but comparably simple – he had easy access to the relevant data, and was able to dismiss several sources immediately, either due to incompatible size or gestation period, or undesirable lifespan, and it only took a month to narrow the field to a mixture of the relatively common _Lynx lynx_ and the substantially more rare, but near perfect for his purposes _Panthera tigris sondaica_. From there, it was only a matter of altering the base genetics for the desired traits; a relatively simple matter – _but not one without yet more failures_ – that took little time to refine.

After months, years actually, of work, it had all come down to a single viable foetus kept alive through constant monitoring and through Adrian secretly becoming, he suspected, the foremost expert on feline genetics in the world. In the end he had delivered her himself during an hour long ordeal that left him with a tiny, blind, bright orange creature wrapped in a towel that he used to dry her off by hand before offering the specialised formula he had developed in the eventual expectation of success. At the time, he supposed he should have felt godlike, but as the adrenaline wore off, all he had been able to muster was the exhausted relief he remembered seeing in the faces of new parents.

_ He had called her Bubastis – what better name for her than the city of Bast?_

She grew quickly – her eyes opened after only a week, and within first two months, she was far quicker to pick up on routines and commands than he had expected. During the first six months of her life, he allowed himself to drop off of the radar to a small degree – holding meetings remotely from the tip of South America and blaming his absence on important research; a statement that was not entirely false – there was no other creature on Earth quite like Bubastis, so rearing the cat was, in a way, research, and there was the construction finishing in Antarctica to oversee as well. He could easily maintain outward appearances while managing her upbringing, so why shouldn’t he? _He had earned it, after a fashion. Call it paternity leave._ After her first year, however, he had to begin leaving her alone for longer periods – it wouldn’t be until her third year, once the construction of Karnak was complete, that she would first appear at his side in the public eye.

_He’d framed that first press photograph of her standing next to him, eyes squinted against the bright lights from the press, looking all the world like something out of a science fiction novel._

The secrecy did occasionally get to him. Not the secrecy, really, but the loneliness that went with it. He was no stranger to loneliness in general, of course, but there was a certain weight to this particular kind of being alone; something that he suspected lesser men would be unable to weather. It became somewhat easier to bear, however when there was close to three kilograms of feline head resting on his hip and a low half-purr-half-chuff – _he wasn’t quite sure what he had expected her vocalisations to be like, but surely he thought she would have been capable of one or the other, not a limited blend of the two_ – rumbling through his bones.

He had realised – at some point or another – that he would lose her. He didn’t know how he knew, only that it had settled in his stomach like a stone, and the only thing stronger than his dread was the knowledge that if he didn’t succeed, it wouldn’t matter whether he did lose her or not. There were, after all, safeguards in place for her – he had begun taking DNA samples early on, just in case something were to happen. _For the eventuality of something happening, he sometimes corrected himself, You always knew, somewhere in the back of your mind, that something would happen._

And it did happen. Jon happened.

_Sorry girl._

He’d barely had time to get the words out before pulling the switch; he hadn’t needed to say them aloud, she would have heard him regardless, but it seemed important somehow. She hadn’t turned to meet his gaze, but he’d seen her ear flick towards him and knew that she knew what he had done.

_He didn’t regret what he had done. Would do it again a thousand times if he had to, but he regretted not being able to say more._

The first night after the end of the world, as it were, was a cold one.

In the weeks that follow – more than that if he’s completely honest with himself _(he’s not)_ – he sometimes swears he hears the disembodied voice of Bubastis echoing through the empty halls of Karnak, and every time his thoughts are forced back to the question of where Jon Osterman's individual molecules had gone in between falling into his trap and rematerialising, and from there to the question of what happens when those atoms never have the proper chance to reunite.


End file.
